Linkbar

Sunday, August 15, 1999

I drove all over New Zealand during 1999 in the company of hawks, which the Maori call Kahu. Here are a couple of images they have let me make of them; indeed I wouldn't have photographed them at all if I hadn't felt them ask me to.

This map is pretty much complete, but doesn't include my brief side trip to the bottom of the Coromandel peninsula:

Thursday, July 1, 1999

Carving jade, or greenstone, or pounamu (its Maori name) is a difficult process, even with modern tools. But what humans now do with bench grinders, motorized drills, and silica carbide (synthethic diamonds), the Maori carvers used to do with stone...

It all starts as a boulder of jade, formed by still-unexplained forces beneath the crust of the earth. Cut into blocks and then into thin slices, jade begins to take shape.But before anything can really be made of the jade, a design must be devised. Join Stuart Stephenson of London, England as he designs and makes his piece of jade.

There are many options for a design. You can choose a traditional design, such as the common fish-hook or a spiral of various kinds. Or you can design your own, which involves drawing and re-drawing in search of just the right form.

Stuart went through several pages of paper before deciding on the piece he wanted to make. It's just third from the right on the top row, above, looking a bit like a flame.

Now it's a matter of grinding a larger piece of jade down to the size and shape Stuart needs. He starts with a piece of jade just about the right size, and steps over to the bench grinder.

It starts with a very rough grind, as shown below, by the hard sharp edge of the piece.

Gordon Wells, the jade carver who supervises and instructs along the way, demonstrates each step before letting Stuart take over.

The grinding isn't very fast work, because jade is very hard (8 on the Mohs scale). Even synthetic diamonds (not quite 10 on the Mohs scale) have a tough time. After a while, though, the piece begins to take shape.

When the design is finally roughed out with the grinder, it's time to put in the details.

For the finer, closer work, a drill is the best tool. It has a silicon carbide tip as well, and, like the grinder, has a stream of water directed on it to cool the drill and the jade, as well as to carry away the fine jade dust. Gordon demonstrates how to use it.

The first form is made by drilling a hole straight through the jade and then widening it in the intended direction. This is a technique developed by the original Maori jade carvers, who realized that rubbing away pieces of jade was harder than going through it (which was hard enough, but removed more jade for the same effort).

Stuart continues to drill the design into the jade, working carefully to avoid error. Error is possible, but because of the hardness of jade, very unlikely and minimal if the carver is paying any attention at all. It takes a significant amount of effort and time to do anything with jade, intended or not.Moving the piece and the drill around to get the best angle, Stuart begins to be able to see his design take shape.Gordon watches carefully to be sure Stuart is using the tools properly.When the form is finished, Stuart then has to round over the edges.Gordon helps out, checking Stuart's progress and doing some of the truly challenging parts himself.Then he puts Stuart back to work on the rest of the piece.After the piece is finished drilling, it's time to polish the jade.

Sanding puts the final polish on the jade. It takes a long time, longer usually than the grinding and drilling. It's done by hand and acquaints the carver intimately with the piece.

There are five levels of sanding paper, increasing in fineness from 150 to 1200. The process involves sanding, rinsing in water, and sanding again. The jade must be sanded wet until the very final step, when it is buffed dry before polishing.

Stuart sands and sands. Each time he must check with Gordon before progressing to the next fineness of sanding paper.At long last, after several hours, the piece is finished!

The glacier was amazing, and walking on it was very cool indeed. The sun beat down and warmed us - except our hands, which got cold with every loss of balance. The hobnail boots kept us feeling our way carefully and treading in the steps of those gone immediately before and years ago.

Approaching the glacier's terminal face, the ice just melts away and sometimes breaks off in large icefalls. Climbing up the glacier just above the terminal face, it's evident that the ice is truly flowing.

Atop the glacier, above the face, we could look out towards the Tasman Sea, just 15-20 kilometers away!

Crevasses lead to the edge of the ice, where the mountains start. We could also see the bottom of an icefall farther up the glacier. The ice follows the same contours as the land below it, so at steep sections of land far below, the ice falls and separates, creating many crevasses.

Cracks in the ice eventually widen and deepen, creating amazing under-ice spaces, sometimes like the cavern described by Joe Simpson in his book, Touching the Void.

We got to crawl through a crevasse, which involved taking off all our backpacks and squeezing through a tight space, getting soaked in the process. (Thanks to the guiding company for the waterproof jacket!)

There were deep holes in the ice, through which I felt I could drop a stone to the very bottom of the glacier valley, at least a kilometer below me. And then there were holes barely beginning to form, with just a little water seeping into it, eroding the ice...

Thursday, June 10, 1999

This is my tribute to Sundog, my trusty companion and vehicle, a 1981 Ford Cortina wagon of surprisingly bright color...

We went to the base of Treble Cone ski area, near Wanaka, before the snow came down...

But then the crash happened. The inside of the car was a jumble of stuff that came out from under the driver's seat into the pedal area, and my shoulder and ribs broke the passenger seat.

The front wheel broke off the axle in the collision. The engine compartment is a jumble of parts, almost none where they are supposed to be...

The frame was twisted, and the rear window was shattered so completely there was nothing left.

Before Sundog headed off to the Wanaka dump, Steve, the guy from the service station, removed the registration tag. (Note to would-be rego stealers: The rego has been cancelled with LTSA.) Farewell, friend!

Saturday, May 15, 1999

I thought it would be an interesting place to have a look at, and perhaps talk to the owners to learn more. It seemed to fit with the monastery and with Parihaka as part of a possible project on peaceful places around New Zealand.

So I walked closer, down the hill, to see what was there.

A deck chair seemed to say that someone had been there, and was planning to be back.

But other things indicated to me that it would be a while before this truly was a house of peace. The place was nothing but a deck, separated from the hill I was on by a large reinforced wall.

The posts were freshly in place, with labels still intact and unweathered. There were no people, no tools, no sign that the workers would return, except the chair.

In the end, this is all there was: a sign, a path, a construction site, and a view unequaled even in paradise.

Saturday, May 1, 1999

Saturday, April 10, 1999

Bodhinyanarama, The Garden of Enlightened Knowing, is a Buddhist monastery in the Theravadin tradition in the Stokes Valley above Wellington, New Zealand.

Here's a look around:

And here's a photo essay I did on the concept of life springing from death on the monastery grounds:

The audio here is of the monks chanting in the morning and evening sessions of chanting and meditation. The normal order of events is:

5:15 morning chanting (puja) begins

The following are samples of morning chanting. The opening and closing are always done but the others vary daily, not usually in any particular pattern.

Chanting is in Pali, which is the language the Buddha spoke, and English. First phrases of Pali are chanted and then the English translations.

This is what was chanted the morning of Tuesday, April 27, 1999:

Morning opening

Preliminary homage to the Buddha. This is often chanted before other chanting.

In praise of the Dhamma. The Dhamma (Sanskrit: Dharma) is the set of teachings by the Buddha which lead to Enlightenment.

In praise of the Sangha. The Sangha (the word means "community") is the monks and nuns, including those at this and all other monasteries.

5:30 morning meditation begins (silent)

6:45-7 morning meditation ends, followed by some more chanting and the closing chant

7-7:15 end of morning puja

then in the evening:

7 evening chanting begins

The following are all part of a single chant, a list of the ten teachings which "should be reflected upon again and again by one who has gone forth" and become a monk or a nun. These, as with the other chants, are in Pali and English, alternating.

The days and nights pass by

At the end of my life

The kamma (Sanskrit: karma)

Solitude

Impermanence

7:15 evening meditation begins (silent)

8:15 evening meditation ends, followed by more chanting and the closing chant

Saturday, March 27, 1999

White Island is a volcanic island 50km north of Whakatane, in the open ocean outside the Bay of Plenty. It used to be a site from which sulfur was mined, but the acidity of the environment (and its marine salinity) made the prospect even more of a losing one than it would have otherwise been. Now the island is a site for travelers, tourists, and scientists to explore in search of the guts of the earth.

Okay, so it's a tilted horizon, but it works, doesn't it? This is a big crater pouring out ash. The ash comes from somewhere underground, and in January the area which is now under the green lake (left) collapsed and filled with water. Before then, it was just a big flat area like the area just below it in this picture.

It's like a moonscape, or a small world which is way out of scale with the huge humans in it. The distance from where this picture was made to the rocks in the rear center is about 700 meters!

The colors were really wild, and these mudpots were cooking up steam and solid precipitate which forms areas of color, like below.

This is a close-up, but it feels like an aerial shot, doesn't it?

This is an area about the size of an average paperback book. The red color is relatively rarely seen on White Island, but there is plenty of sulfur to make things yellow. The island used to be mined for sulfur before it became uneconomical to do so in such a harsh environment.

This is a look inside the guts of the earth. The mud here is very hot and is boiling up from far below...